


At the Heart of the Matter

by notenuffcaffeine



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Communication Failure, Gen, Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, M/M, POV Derek, POV Stiles, Post-Season 4, Pre-Season 5, here have some angst, pre-Sterek - Freeform, stubborn boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:46:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4414499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notenuffcaffeine/pseuds/notenuffcaffeine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek makes the choice to leave after Mexico and that choice wasn't all about the Desert Wolf. The problem is that nobody ever wants to just say what they mean or say what they want. It leads to missed chances and frustration. Stiles has to live with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Derek

\---***---

What do you do?

What do you do when your life goes sideways? When everything you know, everything you've ever learned about the world and told yourself is true, your every interaction with this space we call reality, is suddenly questioned? You can't trust it. You can't trust yourself. That should be the worst part but somehow it isn't.

It's not just the part where everything about the world is trying to kill you. The world always tries to kill you. You start dying from the second you're born, but that's not the point. That's different. These external forces are fine. They're external. You can't control the monsters that sneak up from the shadows. You can control how you react to them.

You fight them, of course. You grab them in your hands, you flex your claws, and you win. Monsters are easy. You can get at them. You can end them. As a bonus on the side that you never have to admit out loud to anyone, you can save a few innocent lives when you kill monsters. You can save your own life that way, too, and it's not that hard to wrap your hands around someone's neck.

But when there's no monster to physically thrash and kill when you need to, what do you do? What do you do when the only monster is the one living in your brain? It just moved in and took over and you can't think around _him_. He holds the power, like a hostage taker with a death-wish. He's a little crazy and maybe he's taking you with him. You don't know. And that's the worst part.

You can't even control your past; all you can do with your backstory is come to terms with it. You know how _that_ story goes and you know you can't change it. You can analyze it to death when you're low, replay all the worst parts when you're living on rage and blaming yourself, you can justify yourself and blame the world when you're in the light of day and needing to breathe a minute. But it all still happened. It all still shaped you. It's not an end, just a new beginning. Every decision you make as an adult is influenced by the time you fell in love as a teenager. Or at least, you thought you were in love.

Now you know you were just a stupid kid. You know there were consequences. You know that fire burns down walls and ends lives fast, and it doesn't matter if that fire started in your head and in your heart because you fell asleep in English class and woke up believing in the fantasy dreamland of Romeo and Juliet. You were a stupid kid. You didn't know then how wrong you were, how skillfully the world could lie to you and make you see and feel things that weren't real. It was real to you then, and you can't take that back. You could lie, sure, but it still happened. You felt those things. But that doesn't make them real.

What the hell do you do with what they left behind? Self-loathing? _Check_. Anger? _Check_. Fear? _Check_. Bitter distrust toward your fellow human beings? _Check_. There is an obvious trend toward the darker end of the spectrum left behind. You can kill monsters because you are a monster and you know it, and you don't think there's a single good reason why someone innocent and free of that curse should suffer the blood on their hands for it. That's how you deal with it.

It only figures that the cure to that curse is just another poison. It comes in a surprising package, all gangly and strong, dark haired and brown eyed and incapable of shutting up. There's an infectious energy to him, even when the only thing coming out of his mouth is "oh god oh god I'm gonna die." It just launches you into action with a determination because _no_ , that one will not die. He will keep going and you will protect his ability to do so at all costs, despite all logic, and _no_ , you don't know _why_. If you did, you could turn off the switch in your head that let him take over your brain.

He shouldn't even be on your radar. He's only there at all because of someone who hates you more than he likes you, some kid who has already tried to kill you or let you die more times than you can count. You call Scott a friend anyway, but that's because you are well aware of your poor understanding of the definitions of friendship. You don't expect much because monsters don't have friends, and if the bar of expectation is lowered enough then in theory you don't have people expecting anything from you.

Until the brown eyes stared at you and didn't back down from you, didn't let you back down from him. Then you expected everything from yourself and you nearly killed yourself trying to meet your own demands. It woke you up, protecting him and his friends, chasing after his shadow when you failed, and trying to get him back on his feet in the aftermath. He needed help and you couldn't fully understand that until you leaned on him, too, like he told you to do. Leaning on him got you to where you could stand on your own and offset the negative balance that had consumed yourself.

It snuck up on you; it was all your own fault, your choice to move around him like a planet in orbit. And he smiled at you for it, told a stupid joke to make you smile, made himself look like an idiot in a doomed effort to make you laugh. He saved your life more ways than you'll admit, and he's never once brought it up.

You never said _thank you_ for it, not in so many words, but you thought about it. Maybe he's psychic, too, because he always seems to be the one to understand, to give you the benefit of the doubt. He shows up when you need him, he bails you out, you bail him out. You can fight shoulder to shoulder and together come out on top.

But that doesn't make you friends. There's a context there, as brothers in arms and not the buddy you call up to play video games. For one thing, you don't play video games, and for another, he doesn't play sports outside of lacrosse practice and playing "tag!" with werewolves. Together you're good at surviving, but maybe not anything else.

So you stand across the room from each other in a group, you trade barbs and sarcasm until people think you're both flirting, and you quietly back each other up without always meaning to. That's how it works. That's how you are. It's the only "you" the pair of you will ever know because of too many reasons to count. He's younger, he's supposed to be happier, he isn't cursed, and he has friends. And you can't ruin that any more than you already have. He should have better.

So what do you do?

You leave.

\-----//-----


	2. Stiles

\-----//-----

 

Okay. Seriously?

What in the hell makes this fair? What am I supposed to do with this idiot? Draw a diagram? I'm not sure he would follow even then. I should just write it out. Plain English. I know he understands that. He's got a brain, I know it, even if it's buried under a hard head. These are things I know. I just don't know what to do with them.

For starters, you know, you save a guy's life so many times and you'd think he'd give you the benefit of the doubt that you can help him out, that you can serve as sufficient backup. I'm the reason the guy got out of Mexico that first time. Nobody else recognized him. What would he have done then? Died in a desert. It's not like he could turn into an epic, kick ass four legged actual wolf when he could hardly stand up. He was all squishy-human. And now I don't get any credit with the guy because I'm not a werewolf, or a coyote or a fox or a whatever. That's borderline racist, man.

Look, I get it. I'm messed up. Maybe I'm not a wereform but I'm a whole bag of cats all on my own. I get that. I'm dealing with that. But maybe some help would have been awesome? I'm a babysitter lately, and Scott's just a great big puppy with really huge paws he keeps tripping on and dragging the rest of us into trouble with. I don't want to hold that leash. Remember the part about _squishy human_? Maybe I need the backup, but I didn't even get a chance to ask.

The stupid thing is that I miss him. I can figure out Scott's efforts at accidentally killing us all. I think he's got a good chance at stealing my dad from me. Whatever. I'm pretty good at handling life in Beacon Hills without the broody Derek Hale. He doesn't even return phone calls. Sometimes he texts. He used to just show up, whether we wanted him or not, and now he's impossible to get a hold on. I want him around because... Just because. I don't know, maybe he's like a security blanket or something. Maybe he's a good luck charm or something, I have a cranky werewolf's glare instead of a lucky rabbit's foot.

I'm not sure when exactly I started thinking in the possessive tense about Derek Hale, but that's apparently a thing now so I'm just going to roll with it.

That's the crux of the problem though, isn't it? That's _my_ werewolf. I have a pack of them. I don't care what pack boundaries are in some magically werewolfy definitions of the word. That's my pack. It's my pack, I'm the center of that gravitational pull, and I decide who gets caught up in it. Derek's in my pack. And Derek's not _here_.

I'm a little pissed off, to be honest, but I can deal. That's what I do, right? I can shove it in the back of the brain, behind the leftover voices and the anger at all the shit I've gone through in the past two years, and I keep the pack on track. Somebody has to and that's always been me. Maybe Derek won't let me help him, but the others kind of need me. Scott doesn't listen all the time, but I've kept his head attached to his shoulders this long and he doesn't have a chance without me. Pack is everything. I've got more to worry about than Derek.

Now if only my brain would believe me when I try to tell it that. I don't know where Derek is. He could be in a ditch or something. His four legged pain in the ass self could have found his way into a hunter's trap. He has no one with him, except maybe a bounty hunter who would sell him out for a pair of wolf fur-lined boots and a nice coat. Who is he supposed to trust out there? No pack, no help. Damnit.

That's the problem with stubborn, hard headed, idiots. They go off, half-cocked, with half a plan, with no consideration at all for the opinions of the other people potentially involved, as long as it serves the greater good. Theoretically. And theory never quite works out as well in practice. There's always, always, always surprises, little tiny daggers in the backbone of the scheme.

Like that time I had everything planned out, I knew exactly what I was going to say, I was going to come clean and tell Derek exactly what his grown-up, stupid-self was to my world. I wanted the pip-squeak version (okay, so he looked maybe a year younger than me, but he wasn't the same werewolf who could throw an alpha across the room, either.) to trust me at least a little. Somehow I thought that maybe telling him the truth for the first time since meeting him would do that. Whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me God and the Catholic Confessional. I spent a whole afternoon with him, just a babysitting mission that went a little sideways, but I was sorting everything out in the back of my brain, plotting his every possible response and how I could reply. I was going to settle my anxious, nervous issues surrounding him once and for all, and I was going to catch him up to speed. In theory, I had it locked in and ran the risk of a Broody McBoyfriend when he ever grew up again.

And then some bitch shows up and steals him out a second story window before I have a shot at saying anything. What the hell. Who can plan for that, okay? Who?

So yeah, theory sucks when it gets down to the wire. So when a stubborn idiot decides to do something stupid because _maybe_ it will be better for everyone if he does, he's usually wrong. When it comes to Derek, I can guarantee you that he is wrong. He doesn't even know how wrong he is. He should be with me, with the pack, kicking ass around people who trust _him_ even if he doesn't trust _them_.

I'm a selfish bastard sometimes.

Just because I want him around doesn't mean he has to be here. He's an adult ( _again_ ) and he has his own life. I'm not sure what there is of one outside of the chaos Scott and I bring to it, but it's his, not mine. He can do what he wants, it's his natural born human right. It's my right to bitch when he ditches me - I mean, _us_... - but it's his right to do it. I'm not his family, I can't order him around, and I don't have to. He's smart, he can take care of himself better than I can take care of myself. I have no claim on him at all.

Besides, let's get real for a second, think this through. Say he comes back, say I tell him to stay and he listens and he does. Then what? I don't even know what to do with... All of that. Everything would get complicated and weird before anything would make any sense at all. I would learn but... _Come on_. He can be intimidating. There's a whole list of things I could screw up. I'm not exactly skilled in the relationship department. And Derek is not Malia. There's rules and boundaries and he tosses up all these walls. That's a lot of work to deal with, and the whole beasties-trying-to-kill-us thing, and finish school on top of it all. Performance anxiety, you know? I'm not perfect. I don’t know what to do.

But here's the thing: he's not perfect either. It's not a one way street. He would have to learn, too. He’d have to learn not to run away, for starters. Just the tip of _that_ iceberg. Maybe some communication skills wouldn’t hurt. He can get a long way on charm alone but defaulting to defense-mode isn’t always useful. So there’s stuff we can work on. I don't care what kind of experience he's got on me with his extra four years. He's never had me, either. We would _both_ have to figure _each other_ out.

Maybe we should do that. Yeah. I'll call him and tell him to get his werewolf ass back home. His pack wants him home, and I miss him. I want him back home.

Maybe this time I'll figure out how to tell him _why_.

Maybe this time he’ll answer.

\---- // ----


End file.
